


the fall

by chouettesalangai



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, Mortal AU, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:06:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26321608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chouettesalangai/pseuds/chouettesalangai
Summary: Most dreams mean nothing. Unfortunately for Apollo, that's not the case.
Relationships: Apollo & Artemis (Percy Jackson)
Kudos: 17





	1. dreams

You are seven when you have your first dream. Your first real dream, you mean. The first of many that plunge you into a different world, walking in the steps of another. There is no boundary between reality and fiction, no, not in your dreams; you watch empires burn and cities born and women fall and men rise and all you can remember is someone screaming and someone laughing and you’re not which one is you. You’re not alone. If you squint, you can make out a faint image of someone standing beside you. You can’t see their face, but you imagine they’re sighing, as if accompanying you reluctantly in the marketside. You don’t know where these thoughts come from. The sky is vivid blue, you can taste the salt in your tongue from the sea and smell the fresh aromas of the meats roasting from the open markets. Lost in this place, far from the looming skyscrapers you should be more familiar with, you should feel like an anachronism, but if anything these crowded streets feel more familiar than the back alleys that you currently frequent. If anything, in these fantasies, it feels as if your current life is the waking dream. These visions are far too much like memories for your liking. It ends with you, falling, flailing your arms around as if it’s a shock, as if you expected to be immune to the laws of gravity. You shoot towards the ground, tumbling into a burning ball of gas and fire. Stars cloud your vision. A voice booms in your head, making your ears pound. You hear the air whistle through your ears as the Earth grows closer and closer. In the years to come, you’ll realize that though they all start somewhere new, scattered amongst different eras, they always end the same. With the fall. You never seem to find out what happens after that. 

You wake up, feeling cold and lost, and nothing much at all. The moon looks on, fat and full, glimmering in the ink-black night, and suddenly, you’re filled with a desire to hear someone’s voice.

But you remember you’re always all alone, and besides, even if you weren’t, no one would want to talk to you anyways, right?

You pull your dirty sheets over your head, bunching up the covers till you can see nothing but dark. 

You repeat this cycle all over again when it happens the next night.


	2. hallucinations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A familiar face arrives.

“Striking” is the first thing that runs through your mind when you see her for the first time. Superficial, but honestly that’s the first thing that catches your eye. It’s not an opinion, merely an observation of the fact; she’s striking like the sky is blue and grass is green. She walks through the crowd of the streets in a rush, as if she wants to get out of the city as fast as possible. Even so, there’s a clear confidence in her stride, an almost unnatural command in her presence. She’s not smiling, but she isn’t frowning either. Her expression was closed off, as if cut off from the rest of the world. 

Her silver eyes narrow. Suddenly, she whips her face around to meet his gaze head-on. Shit, was he staring for too long? His cheeks grow hot. But, you don’t look away. Silver eyes? How strange, is she some kind of actor? But what kind of role would require her to wear silver contacts? More likely, it’s her natural eye color. You couldn’t let this go. Something about her struck you as off, and the eye color was only the beginning of it. These thoughts run through your mind as you continue the staring competition with the girl. Distracted, you didn’t register that she had stepped right in front of him.

“It’s rude to stare, you know.”

“--Huh?”, he throws his hands up, in a placating manner. 

“It’s not what you think, I swear.”

She gives you a pointed look. Ok. Not buying it. That’s fair, you guess. 

You relent. 

“Fine, don’t believe me. But I’m being honest when I say I wasn’t staring because---”

“ --because you seemed to find me to find me attractive?”

“Well, that’s one way to put it. But, really, I just wanted to ask, do I know you from somewhere?”

The question slips unexpectedly out of your lips. What? That’s not you wanted to ask at all. In fact, all you were going to say was the truth: her silver eyes struck you as odd, so you couldn’t help but stare. And when she caught you in the act, your pride couldn’t let you back down. But, somehow, you’ve asked a completely random question. At least, that’s what you tell yourself. The only reason that those silver eyes caught you off-guard because they looked unnatural, not...not because they seemed too familiar. Like something out of a dream.

Lost in thoughts, you don’t notice how the girl’s face blanches at what should be an innocuous question. Later on, you’ll look back and think maybe if you had paid more attention to signs, you wouldn’t have ended up so clueless in such a precarious situation. But for now, she just abruptly rushes away, not even saying bye. Rude. She doesn’t even look back.


End file.
